Note: The online social activism sector is growing all the time, and sharing information and ideas is crucial to continuing that growth – and the very impact on society. We’re happy to carry the excellent Social Actions Round-up of links and resources here at CauseWired, created by the prolific and plugged-in Joe Solomon. Enjoy it – and pass it along!

This week came the much anticipated re-launch of Change.org! The new Change.org combines online news channels (blogs) that focus on specific issues (i.e. – climate change) with relevant ways to get involved and take action. With a rock-star team of bloggers, and a super tight UI, the new Change.org is definitely worth checking out. You can also check out the posts that covered the re-launch here (including Newsweek, Mashable, and CauseWired) and follow Change.org on Twitter here.

More Platform News:

This week was also Online Giving Marketplaces – a conference that brought together “online giving marketplaces with philanthropy experts, so as to tap the pulse of what’s really happening on the frontier of philanthropy.” From the buzz I picked up from Twitter (Thanks @TomWilliams and @PeterDeitz), there was much discussions and excitement about collaborating on a philanthropy micro-format, which would unlock platforms’ giving opportunities – enabling 3rd party applications to offer them across the web. Check out Tom Williams’ awesome post for more info. You can also check out VentureBeat’s overview plus Lucy Bernholz’s post for excellent notes. You can also see a slideshow of Kiva’s presentation here.

In other platform-specific news…

Wokai is launching a pilot program for China micro-finance – Link (Also covered in WorldChanging)

ThePoint will launch a new site later this month called Groupon as in “group + coupon.”

Britt Bravo asks “Have You Used Social Actions’ Search, WordPress Plug-ins, Widgets, or TwitterFeed Mashup? We Wanna Make You a Star!” – Got a story? Share it here.

Christine Egger introduces The Small Change Fund, a new organization providing small grants to local, grassroots groups across Canada. They recently approached the Social Actions team for strategic advice on how to include individual Canadians in their grantmaking process. With their permission, we’ve brought the conversation into a forum to encourage as broad a range of insights as possible – Join the conversation!